Sub Focus

Born in Guildford, Surrey, on 13 April 1982, the English DJ and producer Nicolaas Douwma is better known by his stage name Sub Focus. Although he started out as a rock fan and followed bands like Nirvana, he discovered his true calling after he began experimenting with music software and learned to produce dance music demos. The new technology enabled him to combine his love of guitar music with the emerging electronic sounds, and bands such as The Prodigy and The Chemical Brothers became his inspiration. Upon leaving school Nicolaas Douwma enrolled on a sound engineering course at college and this provided an excellent foundation from which to hone his production skills. After one of his demo CDs found its way to RAM Records boss Andy Clarke, he signed Douwma to RAM's sister label Frequency. Sub Focus began writing and recording in earnest and in 2005 had his first hit when the single "X-Ray/Scarecrow" reached number one on the UK Dance Chart. In 2008 he had another number one with "Timewarp/Join the Dots" but it wasn't until the following year that he broke into the UKs Mainstream Top 40 when "Rockit/ Follow the Light" reached number 38. 2013 proved to be the first peak of Sub Focus success when his album Torus spawned six hit singles and ranked number 11 on the UK Official Albums chart. In 2020, Sub Focus collaborated with Wilkinson for Portals (number 1 on the UK Dance Albums chart), followed in 2023 by Evolve (number 3). In 2025, Sub Focus released Contact, which reached number 10 on the UK Official Albums chart and featured contributions from Fireboy DML, Irah, Poppy Baskcomb, Grimes, bbyclose, Subsonic, John Summit, Julia Church, Connie Constance, Inéz, Emily Makis, and Katy B.